MOSCOW, May 29 (RAPSI) - Samara, Russia based Legato has filed a lawsuit with the Samara Region Commercial Court, requesting that US company Public Interest Registry be banned from registering zona.org (зона.орг) Cyrillic domain names, citing available registered trademarks, Mikhail Matveyev, a member of the Samara Region Duma (Legislature), writes in his blog.

According to Matveyev, if the Russian court upholds the lawsuit, then the US based Russian language domain would be banned in Russia. Moreover, registrars would be forbidden to register .org (.орг) domain names. In turn, companies and individuals would also be forbidden to obtain and use .org (.орг) domain names.

A similar lawsuit will soon be filed against Verisign and its .com (.ком) domain, Matveyev writes. As far back as 2003, the Samara based company started selling and providing access to Russian domain names using its own technology. In 2007, the company obtained a Russian patent for its technology in this area, as well as for the .com and .org trademarks.

Earlier, Public Interest Registry said it had started registering the Cyrillic .org and .com domain names, Matveyev notes. He believes the entire Russian segment of the Internet is virtually managed by US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that sells (provides) the right to administer (manage) top-level Internet domains, including .com and .ru, to other private companies.